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El Capitan, as seen here from the floor of Yosemite Valley, was once considered almost unclimbable. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Xavier de Jauréguiberry.

Until 1958, no person in known history had climbed the face of what may be the world’s most famous cliff, Yosemite’s El Capitan.

In the 54 years since climbing greats Warren Harding, George Whitmore and Wayne Merry made the first ascent, “El Cap” has been scaled thousands of times. Many individuals have climbed the 3,000-foot wall by numerous routes, and today dozens of climbers may be on the face of the cliff at any given time, nearly every month of the year. Scraps of dropped camping debris litter the valley floor, including bags of human waste, though “poop tubes” are now required of multi-day climbers. Today, just going up is hardly even an achievement in the climbing community, and so climbers bent on setting records or gaining praise must attempt such stunts as solo climbing and speed climbing. It’s been the same story for many of the great walls around the world: Once unclimbed, they are now mostly old news. Pitons scar many of them from base to top, and chalk smudges indicate clearly where a thousand climbers before have anchored their fingertips. For each successive person who goes up—each taking advantage of advances in knowledge, technology and gear—the challenge of the climb loses another trace of its old glory.

But Yvon Chouinard remembers the early years of the sport. He was among the pioneers of modern rock climbing and has climbed El Cap six times, two of which were first ascents of unmarked routes. Chouinard, who lives in Ventura County, began climbing as a kid in the 1950s, when he and several friends began making their first trips to Yosemite. At the time, campsites in the national park were always plentiful—though climbing gear was not.

“We were stealing hemp ropes from the telephone company,” he recalled with a laugh as he spoke to me by phone recently. “We had to learn on our own. There were no schools back then.”

Common practice of the era was to pound bolts into the rock; climbers secured their ropes—and their lives—to these bolts in case of a fall. But Chouinard was among the first people to consider the adverse effects this was having. So he designed his own form of removable pitons and began selling them to others in the small but growing circle of climbers. Eventually he invented gear that could be wedged into cracks, then removed again, leaving the rock unmarked. Later still, Chouinard began making clothing suited for the rigors of scaling cliffs, and in 1972 he founded a little company called Patagonia. It would grow into one of the best-known names in outdoor apparel.

In the 1950s, Chouinard says, there were fewer than 300 climbers in America. Most routes, whether climbed previously or not, were still un-scarred by either chalk or metal, and Chouinard grew high on the challenge and the danger of ascending routes while feeling the rock with his free hand, reaching, sometimes straining, looking for that next hold.

Yvon Chouinard, American climbing pioneer and founder of Patagonia, works a route on the West Face of Sentinel Rock in Yosemite in the 1960s. Photo by Tom Frost.

Today, hundreds of thousands of climbers scale walls around the world. I asked Chouinard if this—the growing popularity of climbing—is good for the world, good for people and maybe even good for the rock.

“It would be good because it’s getting people outdoors and into natural places,” he said—except that, inevitably, the Earth’s great walls have suffered. “Today, you go up a route that people climbed in the 1920s using hemp ropes and pitons, and there’ll be a bolt every 15 feet—and next to a crack. It’s really unfortunate.”

Modern climbing has become commercialized, too, and increasingly competitive. Sponsorships and financial motivation to break records or just gain glory may push climbers beyond their own limits. “And that,” Chouinard said, “can kill you.”

Long ago, Chouinard and his contemporaries committed themselves to an unofficial set of climbing ethics, which foremost mandate that a cliff be left as nature made it; for the next climber, so went the idea, there should be no evidence of a prior climber’s passage. “If you’re going up a route that’s been climbed without gear a thousand times and you’re putting bolts into the rock, you’re ruining the whole experience for the next person,” Chouinard explained. He cites what he calls the “manifest destiny idea, especially in Europe,” about “conquering the mountain and making it easier for the next person.” By such a process, Chouinard says, the magic is all but lost as cabins and cable cars are built on its slopes.

"Clean climbing," with wedges that can be removed after use, leaves no scars on cliffs like this one in Sweden - but faint chalk marks still lead the way. Photo courtesy of Evan Riley.

In Yosemite, where the cliffs remain mostly as they always were, simply the crowds of people clamoring to get their hands on some rock may have diminished the experience. The park service estimates that climbers log between 25,000 and 50,000 “climber-days” per year. Chouinard rarely visits the park anymore simply because of the difficulty in reserving a campsite. He feels the cables that lead up the back side of Half Dome should be removed, leaving this granite cathedral to the skilled and the impassioned—or no one at all.

Today, the popularity of rock climbing has spurred the proliferation of urban climbing gyms. But whether these facilities of synthetic rock, shredded rubber floors and fluorescent lighting are the modern climber’s answer to the urge to go up is questionable. Chouinard thinks that gyms simply don’t replicate the real spirit of rock climbing. “Climbing without risk isn’t climbing,” he says. “And in gyms, there’s no risk. You aren’t leading, and you’re not using your head. You’re just following the chalk marks to the top.”

So if gyms don’t cut it, and if even Yosemite—the Mecca of great walls and sacred rock—has lost its excitement, where on Earth can a modern climber go to find what Chouinard, Harding, Tom Frost and other Golden Age rock legends enjoyed five decades ago? Chouinard says that Sub-Sahara Africa, the Himalayas and Antarctica each offer pristine climbing opportunities. In the United States, he says, Alaska still offers untouched cliffs. And that’s all the hints we’ll give, and we’ll leave the thrills of discovery to you. And remember: If you follow the chalk marks, you’ll get to the top—but are you really climbing?

Brushtailed possums, shown here in their native Australia, are among the most destructive pests in New Zealand. Photo courtesy of Flickr user wollombi.

New Zealand is a nation large enough to host hundreds of millions of invasive pests but just small enough that the federal government sees an honest chance at winning the war against them–and so the battle is on.

I met a young couple this morning in the campground kitchen–Jo and Jason, of Invercargill–who told me all about it. We began talking about trout and diving, but it soon became apparent that they hunted and ate more than just fish and abalone; pigs and deer were also favored quarry. What’s more, Jo told us, she, Jason and their relatives are guns-for-hire, quite literally, and spend two-week family holidays shooting feral tabbies, rabbits, brushtail possums and other non-native mammals in trade for room and board on Stewart Island–a cat-and-rat infested island national park off the southernmost tip of New Zealand. On one recent vacation to this wilderness, they spent 11 days in a government cabin eating food bought with government vouchers, all provided by the New Zealand Department of Conservation, which only asked for an honest-to-goodness effort to stomp on vermin in return–which the family did. (A request for an interview with a D.O.C. pest control officer about this volunteering opportunity went unanswered; he was reportedly swamped with duties.)

“We shot nine kets ‘n’ twinny-somethin’ possums,” Jo said cheerily. “We also tre’apped a lot of retts.” Jason’s preferred game was pigs, he said, and he pulled up his pant leg to show us a vicious scar below the ankle. “Got misself bit by a pig hee’ya,” he said happily as he launched into a detailed and bloody account of the 180-pound boar that fought its way through a pack of pit bulls, broke one’s jaw plumb in half and slashed Jason’s ankle before the young hunter tackled the kiwi-killing swine and forever silenced it with a knife to the heart.

“It’s good fun,” he chirped.

Stewart Island is just one site of earnest pest-culling schemes in New Zealand. Throughout the nation, multiple deer species severely overgraze low-lying brush, plant species that never knew, until the 1800s, the unpleasant reality of being stalked by ravenous, cud-chewing ruminants. The animals were introduced as quarry for gun-slinging outdoorsmen–but populations ballooned out of control. By the mid-1900s, the government was actively trying to cull or eliminate the herds. Using helicopters to access remote areas became popular in the 1960s, with hunters sometimes shooting from the chopper, and the practice remained common for decades. Many culled deer are sold commercially as venison, and helicopters are still used to hoist bundles of carcasses from remote areas back to civilization. Only occasionally do hunters still shoot from the aircraft. (According to Jo, whose father works with the Department of Conservation, showers of blood and gore have sometimes drained from the helicopters and splattered cars and properties, sparking groans of bemused c’est-la-vie-in-New-Zealand annoyance in the rural communities below.)

Possums, of which New Zealand is the host to 70 million, pose a tremendous problem. They were introduced in the 1800s by entrepreneurs hoping to start a healthy fur industry, but today the nation–and its fragile plant community on which the fluffy buggers graze–is overrun. Possum traps lie everywhere in the bushes, road-killed carcasses litter the roadsides and at least one elementary school has held a gala in which the children shot possums and competed afterward in a possum-throwing contest.

Many of New Zealand's pest control projects are efforts to save the national bird, the kiwi. Photo courtesy of Flickr user The.Rohit.

Meanwhile, 30 million rabbits and countless millions more of rats, hedgehogs, feral goats, seven deer species, weasels, stoats and many other pests swarm New Zealand and live more or less happily together, even though some were released as means of eliminating others. Consider the stoat–a predator in the weasel family intentionally introduced to New Zealand in the 1880s to control rodents and rabbits. The stoats turned out to prefer kiwi (the feathered kind). The stoats are blamed today for the extinction of several New Zealand bird species and are often considered one of the worst mistakes made by colonists. Rabbits and rats remain as abundant as ever.

And there are Canada geese, of which 18,000 have been killed recently in organized culls.   

The good news is that locals and tourists can get involved in culling many of New Zealand’s peskiest problem animals through a variety of NGO and government volunteer programs that takes ecotourism in a unique blood-and-bullets direction. I’m not criticizing; New Zealanders are in a tough jam and have got to do what they’ve got to do–but it’s fair to say that in few, if any, other nations are people so encouraged to kill.

Fish Report: We caught one two-pound brown trout at Lake Wanaka. Later, in the streams running into and out of South Mavora Lake, we found excellent fishing for rainbows – hard-fighting, fat and muscular 17-inchers – and caught two brown trout. Each was two feet long and perhaps six pounds. Many other browns just as large hunkered in the slow, clear waters, among silken ropes of algae, like submerged logs. New Zealand trout fishing is truly phenomenal. The trout all have pink flesh like salmon, and we’ll be doing our best to cull this invasive species.

Butchering begins on a 6-pound brown.

Milford Sound, in Fiordland National Park, offers some of New Zealand's most thrilling scenery. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Hector de Pereda.

As the Europeans went about settling new lands in the 18th and 19th centuries, there were at least three things they rarely left home without: grapevines, rats and brown trout. The last–Salmo trutta--is a favorite quarry of fishermen everywhere. Though native to western Eurasia, brown trout have been released into watersheds around the globe–but in few places have they thrived, flourished and conquered as they have in New Zealand. Seeing that I’m flying tomorrow to Christchurch, my fly rod is packed.

Years have passed since I’ve taken a proper cast at a wild trout, and now I must step back into the water, for both the North and the South islands of New Zealand host thriving populations of brown trout almost implausibly large and abundant. The fish first arrived in 1867–the brood of English stock–and they took to the almost countless streams and lakes of New Zealand like Himalayan blackberries along an American highway. The browns grew huge–especially at first–sometimes weighing well over 20 pounds, and as they multiplied, they also dispersed; they went to sea, swam up and down the coasts and nosed their way into virgin rivers where few, if any, salmonids had gone before. They devoured local species and generally reset the balance of New Zealand’s aquatic ecosystems. Over time, the brown trout collectively sized down, and today they average three to five pounds–still, very big, and a huge tourist draw. Loved though they are, browns are an invasive species–and in places the government is dealing with them as a pest.

We’ll be touring New Zealand with a guide. His name is Andrew. He’s my brother. He traveled here last January and tells us anyone would be a fool to visit the South Island and not see the cliffs and marine scenery of Milford Sound, perhaps the closest thing the real world knows to the fabled “Cliffs of Insanity” that Andre the Giant and several friends scaled in the film The Princess Bride. The sheer walls of rock that plunge into the deep waters here also skyrocket out of sight, as boatloads of tourists gape from below. Cameras barely do justice in Milford Sound.

Elsewhere in the wilderness of Fiordland National Park, there are few, if any, roads, and the adventurous traveler faces the tempting prospect of vanishing into the mountainous temperate rainforests. From the ocean on the west side and Lake Te Anau on the east, fjords penetrate deep into the Southern Alps of the national park, and Andrew and I are speculating whether to paddle kayaks into Te Anau’s western arms, which wind deep into wild country that few people on Earth ever see.

In our baggage we also have snorkeling gear and wetsuits, with plans to spend many days in the ocean collecting the paua–that’s local vernacular for what most English speakers call abalone–which cling to tidal and subtidal rocks almost as abundantly as barnacles in places. So promises Andrew, who also tells me that the traveler who arrives at a hostel bearing a sack of paua for the cast iron (or a large brown trout for the broiler) is a man for whom new friends will soon arrive.

This two-foot-long brown trout, about to be released, is about as pretty as trout get--and for anglers a top reason to visit New Zealand. Photo by Andrew Bland.

And we’ve packed rain gear. Though we go to New Zealand in the peak of summer, it won’t be dry; the South Island extends into high enough latitude – as far south as 46 degrees – that it intercepts the wettest of westerlies weather much like coastal Oregon and Washington do. Annual rainfall can exceed 300 inches in parts of Fiordland, and if the skies are persistently gray, there’s always the drier, warmer wine country.

Other attractions in New Zealand:

Marlborough Sounds Maritime Park. A second-best by some opinions to Fiordland National Park, this immense region of islands and inlets is located in the very north of the South Island and receives just a fraction of the rainfall that soaks the South Island’s west coast. Towns and villages, and warmer waters, make it altogether a more hospitable place.

Longfin eel. These beasts prowl many of the waterways of New Zealand–and fly fishermen regularly spot them snaking through the shallows along the shoreline. Though seen as fair game by some fishermen, the eels, which may live for a century and grow to six feet, are also a beloved artifice of natural heritage and a declining species, imperiled by destruction of watersheds.

The longfin eel lives in streams and lakes throughout New Zealand. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Tonyfoster.

The glaciers. In the Southern Alps, glaciers like Fox and Franz Josef invite tourists and trekkers to see and even venture onto these massive flows of ice, each remarkable for their relatively low latitude and elevation; both terminate at less than 1,000 feet of elevation, amidst temperate rainforest. Also remarkable, as climate change impacts other glaciers in New Zealand and rest of the world, Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have actually advanced in recent years.

Dolphins at Kaikoura. At this small east coast cape north of Christchurch, tourists may enter the water and swim with groups of the dusky dolphin. The dolphins show no fear of their admirers and will swim within yards of submerged divers, yet just how Kaikoura’s dolphin diving industry may be impacting the animals themselves has become a matter of concern.

The Great Walks. More than a dozen famed hiking trails on the North and South islands take walkers through some of New Zealand’s most tremendous scenery. The Milford Track, for one, leads trekkers deep into the wilds of Fiordland. Due to intense pressure, applications and permits and required for some of the Great Walks.

Kiwi Bird. The five species of New Zealand’s most famous wild creature, in the genus Apteryx, are all endangered. Stewart Island, a wet wilderness off the southern tip of the South Island, offers the best kiwi viewing opportunities.

The mountain lion is one of the most common large cats but also one of the hardest to see. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Lil Rose.

Just a few miles south, north and east of San Francisco, where I live, it begins. A vast unbroken range of wild country sprawls north into Canada, east across the desert and the Rockies and south all the way to Patagonia: mountain lion country. Also called the puma, cougar and dozens of backwoods names, the mountain lion, Puma concolor, is one of the most abundant yet elusive large predators in the world. Tens upon tens of thousands of them live in their enormous range, and California alone is home to about 5,000, though most of us would hardly know it if we weren’t told. I’ve hiked and biked throughout the state, covering vast distances of road and trail in mountain lion country. Along the way, I’ve seen a few bobcats, some black bears and many coyotes. I’ll bet that mountain lions have seen me. But in all that time, across all that distance, with so many of the cats tiptoeing through the woods and scrub around me, I have never seen even one mountain lion.

All of which is why it’s so amazing that people can reliably go to India and see a tiger. Just how many individuals of Panthera tigris still live in the wild isn’t entirely clear, but there aren’t many. Estimates place the count as low as 3,200 among all six remaining subspecies. Yet in Bandhavgarh National Park, many or most visitors touring the woods on the back of an elephant will see a Bengal tiger. Ranthambhore and Kanha National Parks are considered the next best places to see the animals, with Jim Corbett, Kaziranga and Panna National Parks all recognized as likely bets, too. (In the forests of Sasan Gir National Park, visitors may even see lions—the last of the nearly extinct Asiatic lions which once ranged from India to Italy but succumbed to human activity where leopards and tigers did not.)

How imperiled is the tiger? Scientists’ premonitions are dire when it comes to the tiger’s odds of going extinct at the hands—well, chainsaws and bullets—of people. In the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, for instance, home to 75 million people, there were 300 tigers in 2006, according to an annual census. In 2011, biologists estimated there were just 257. Meanwhile, organized multi-national groups have recently announced a very ambitious goal of spurring a two-fold increase in tiger numbers throughout Asia. It’s a promising turnaround from the days not so long ago when the Russian government actively and, sadly, successfully advocated for extermination of the now-extinct Caspian tiger. But I wouldn’t take any chances. See this beautiful cat while you can.

Not in the market for a plane ticket to India? Don’t want to deal with the crowds? Already seen your tiger? Then other thrills in big predator viewing are to be had, with almost 100-percent success rates in some places. Here are some good bets:

1) Brown bears of McNeil River Falls, Alaska. From June to September, several dozen of the world’s most powerful bear, Ursus arctos, may gather at once at this famed sprawl of waterfalls to feed on salmon. Visitors have the incredible opportunity to stand as close as several yards from the bears as the animals hunt, lounge, play and fight, seemingly oblivious to their admirers. This rare dynamic between bear and person is due to the tightly regulated arrangement that allows small numbers of people to come, with a guide, and do little else but stand in a designated perimeter on the river bank and watch bears. Want to go? Apply in advance. Note: the bears, which local biologists and guides know by name and appearance, have declined in number, possibly due to bear hunting being allowed near the viewing site.

2) Polar bears of Churchill, Manitoba. The bears are just as big as the browns of southern Alaska, but they’re white, almost 100-percent carnivorous and not opposed to stalking humans. In other words, don’t leave the the tank-like safari vehicles that roll through the frozen scrub here as autumn visitors plaster their faces to the glass. Outside, bears roam the tundra, waiting for the waters to freeze and seal hunting to resume. Polar bears aren’t just a tourist attraction here; Ursus maritimus is an accepted part of life for locals, whose town is dubbed the “Polar Bear Capital of the World.” In Churchill, there is even a temporary holding cell for trouble-maker polar bears, and residents reportedly keep all doors unlocked at all times in case anyone should need to dodge bears wandering the streets.

Polar bears are almost a sure sight for tourists in Churchill, Manitoba. Photo courtesy of Flickr user ucumari.

3) Great white sharks. On the set of Jaws, a very large—and real—great white shark unexpectedly destroyed a miniature diving cage. The footage of the shark, entangled in cables as it thrashed and tore the film prop to pieces before breaking away, was so thrilling to the film crew that they rewrote the script to make a place for the footage in the 1975 blockbuster, a movie that so impacted people’s fear of sharks that Jaws author Peter Benchley said later that he wished he hadn’t written the novel. Anyway, in the real world of modern great white shark tourism, the most feared inhabitants of the oceans don’t destroy cages. Rather, at the Farallon Islands, at Guadalupe Island, off Cape Town and in South Australia, the sharks swim gracefully around the cages, nosing out hunks of tuna and mammal flesh thrown from the boat while paying customers ogle through the bars.

4) Wolves of Yellowstone. In 1995, gray wolves from Canada were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. Canis lupus, known as livestock-killers, somewhat fictionalized as man-eaters, had been exterminated viciously from most of the lower 48 states. Though wolf opponents, many of them big-game hunters or ranchers, decried the effort, the predators are back now, numbering 1,600 or more throughout the Rockies and Cascades. In Yellowstone National Park, about 100 wolves are consistently observed, especially in the winter months. To see the wolves of Yellowstone, visitors can drive through the park and watch out the windows as they go, or hope to see wolves while hiking in the backcountry. Anyone stands the chance of seeing a wolf or even a pack, but the likelihood is improved by hiring a guide.

5) Crocodiles of Northern Australia. One of the nastiest creatures on earth, the estuarine crocodile is the sort of animal one should want to see from a distance, a large boat or a vehicle. The animals kill and eat people with some regularity in Australia. The huge reptiles, which may reach more than 20 feet in length, were once hunted almost to extinction for their skins, but restrictions on the trade and a crocodile ranching business have allowed the wild population to grow. Today, crocodile viewing is a tourist attraction, with the region to see them being the tropical north of the nation. And while not every excursion will be a success, other encounters can happen when you least want them to. Use caution in croc country—and stay out of murky sloughs and swamps.

The setting sun showers Spil Dag National Park in a dusky, rosy red.

Late one night as I slept on a chilly moonscape plateau in Spil Dag National Park, a ruckus out in the rock fields woke me: Took-a-lump took-a-lump took-a-lump. I sat up and saw a herd of the park’s wild horses galloping past in that proud and pompous way that these animals exhibit—like they know that we keep tacky pictures of them on our walls and listen to rock songs about them. The animals neighed as they went past my camp, their manes flailing in the wind and their flanks so shiny that they glistened in the light of the moon.

The full moon.

For a month had passed since the bear had walked into my camp, and two weeks since I’d stayed in a room, and 12 days since I’d last shaved. But more relevant was that I had only a week until my flight out of Istanbul. I turned on my headlamp and had a good look at my map. The city was 500 kilometers away by freeway, and if I hoped to do any scenic riding I would need to move at least 120 kilometers every day and still reserve at least two full days in the city to handle all the joyless logistics of wrapping up a bicycle tour—finding a cardboard shipping box, packing the bike away, getting to the airport, sleeping there.

At sunrise, I stretched out my hamstrings and gazed over Turkey. The north slope of Spil Dag dropped off so sharply that I imagined that, leaning outward just enough, I could spit onto a taxi in the streets of Manisa, which sprawled silently thousands of feet below. To the southwest was Izmir and beyond that the glistening Aegean. The previous night, the sunset had been no less spectacular—rows of peaks in all directions glowing rosy red as dusk softly fell. It was a view worth a day of my life.

A herd of Spil Dag wild horses grazes by the road.

Thirty kilometers north of Manisa, a tiny Kangal puppy jumped out of the scrub as I came its way. It gave chase, tripping on oversized feet and howling desperately. The day was blazing hot and I was miles from anywhere. I stopped, sure that the animal would die if I left it. I placed her in my basket and went onward. I briefly (for about 40 seconds) entertained the idea of taking her to Istanbul, paradise for stray dogs, but thought better of things and left her in a village by the water fountain. Though many folks in rural Turkey will kick their dogs and clobber them with sticks, they nonetheless keep them alive. It’s a conundrum, and I promised the puppy, “You may not like it, but you’ll live.”

A Kangal puppy receives a lift from the author to the nearest village.

I couldn’t resist taking a scenic route into the mountains the next day, and as I passed through a town called Gördes, a plainclothes police officer flagged me down and showed me his badge. Armed with a passport and a Turkish tourist visa, I could have said “So what?” and moved on, but I generally try to be a cordial and pleasant person. I handed over the requested document. He grinned, pleased at my obvious discomfort—and pocketed my passport.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“None,” he answered smugly, then suggested, “Çay?”

I walked in cold silence beside this bully to the station, he strutting proudly as the townspeople ogled the tourist he’d captured. “From America,” the cop boasted, like he’d shot me at 400 yards with a rifle. At the station, six of them sat with me for tea, and a boy came promptly with a tray of tulip-shaped glasses. One of the officers took my passport and began making mysterious phone calls. He shouted rapidly (which is simply how people talk here) at some distant colleague and paced excitedly around the patio while examining the pages of my passport, turning it around and rotating his head to read the visa stamps.

“Problem?” I asked again, not sure that village cops had any right to confiscate my property.

“No,” said the one who apprehended me. I lifted my arms and shrugged. “Please, my passport.”

He grinned his stupid grin again and with his hand beckoned me to wait. He stretched in the sun like a fat cat. They freed me after two maddening hours, and I got out of Gördes well past noon to begin a long slow climb into the mountains. I took a dirt road, believing it would be a shortcut, but it dead-ended in the woods. I walked for an hour and by evening had gone just 70 kilometers—hopelessly behind schedule. I had water, wine and a few almonds, but I was done playing the monk. I wanted a real dinner. I found asphalt, then a village, and in it a market, but it was the sort of village market stocked with just candy bars and chips. No less than 20 young boys had swarmed my bike and were now peering in the doorway. “Do you have tomatoes?” I asked. “And a melon?” The clerk got on the telephone and made some arrangement. He told me to wait as it grew dark, and after 15 puzzling minutes, an older fellow—his dad, as it turned out—arrived carrying a tray set with a plate, silverware, salt and pepper, four whole tomatoes and a melon. He set it on the counter and offered me a stool. The crowd outside the door waited eagerly—it was feeding time.

But this was too awkward. “I’m sorry,” I said, patting my chest graciously. “But I must go. Can I have this in a, um, plastic bag?” The father and son promptly packed up my meal, even taking several minutes with scissors and tape to make a small package to carry some salt, and handed it over. Predictably enough, they refused money. “But this is a place of business!” I tried to say—but when a Turk has it in his mind to be generous, there is no fighting it. Embarrassed, I left town and slept in a field.

I did 130 kilometers the next day. That night it poured, and in the morning it was still coming down. I drank cold coffee in my tent until almost noon, then made a break for it. A half pint of water raced down my back as I slipped out of my tent and into the rain. Just three miles later, almost to the town of Susurluk, I got my first flat tire of the whole trip and, as I repaired it, my pump broke. I walked to town in the drizzle and found a bike shop. The man repaired it—and flicked his chin and made that tsk sound at the sight of my money. “But-” Oh. What was the point of objecting? Then he called for tea.

Outside, in the clammy cold, I’d have dropped 2,000 bucks on the spot for teletransport lift to San Francisco. Realistically, there was the option of a bus to Istanbul, but I wasn’t eager to run the risk of dented spokes and smashed derailleurs. My best option, then, was a ferryboat to Istanbul. The nearest port was Bandirma, 30 miles north, and with the rain at a drizzle and a tailwind begging me to hit the road, I made my final sprint. Cars and trucks splattered me with mud, and the rain soaked me to the skin—but I was flying, and the kilometer postings dwindled fast. 40. 30. 20. At 10, the rain started again and the traffic thickened as I neared the city. At last, I rolled into the terminal, all mud and sweat and stink. I piled my grubby luggage through the x-ray security gate, apologizing for the mess that I was, and bought a ticket for the 9:30 p.m. boat.

I arrived in Istanbul in the wee hours of the morning. Several blocks from my friend Irem’s apartment, I stopped at a late-night kiosk for a package of almonds. The young clerk saw the exhaustion in my eyes, I think, and as I opened my wallet he unleashed his hospitality upon me in the simplest way he knew: He jutted out his chin, sharply waved his hand and gently patted his chest. I would have fought—but I had no fight left in me. Turkey, marvelous, marvelous Turkey: I owe you a beer—and a thousand cups of tea.